Monash student elections: How many people actually vote?

From a combined population of more than 50,000 students at Caulfield and Clayton campuses, fewer than 1 in 10 have voted in recent polls.

MSA President Matilda Grey said students usually needed a good reason to make the effort.

“If there’s a huge reason to want to come out and either support your friends or get the enemy out of office, something like that will motivate students enough to come out and vote,” she said.

“It depends on the nature of who’s running and what’s happened in the year to generate the voter base.”

With a full-ticket opposition party this year, she expects a larger turnout for next week’s elections.

“I think this year will be very different, I would expect that a lot of people would come out and vote this year.”

Last year only 7.3 per cent of students voted in the MSA Clayton elections, and that was an increase from the 6.52 per cent who voted in 2015.

Surprisingly, even though there are almost twice as many students at Clayton campus compared to Caulfield, only about 300 more students voted in MSA elections than for MONSU.

In total, 12.26 per cent of students voted in 2016 MONSU elections, compared to 10.78 per cent the year before.

Nick Mandylas

Second year Caulfield student Nick Mandylas said he didn’t vote last year. “I saw them campaigning all over campus, but as a first year didn’t really receive much information about what their policies were,” he said.

This year one of his friends is running for a position, “so I’m planning to vote for her”.

The students elected are responsible for almost $4 million in Student Services Amenities Fee and for a large proportion of the social life on campus.

Any student whose degree is registered at that campus is able to vote in the election.